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ANNEXATION OF HAWAII 




SPEECH 



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HON. HENRY M. TELLER, 



OF COLORADO, 



IN THE 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



JUXK 25, 1898 




WASHINOTOM. 

1898. 







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68.6.5_4 



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SPEECH 



HON. HENRY M. TELLER. 



The Senate having under consideration the joint resolution (H. Res. 259) to 
provide for annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States- 
Mr. TELLER said: 

Mr. President: I am one of those who voted against an adjourn- 
ment and against an executive session. I did not do so for the 
purpose of forcing any Senator into unfair debate at a late hour 
of the night. I had not myself heard that any Senator desired 
that there should be a postponement for his convenience. I have 
been one of those who have absented themselves from the Senate a 
good deal to-day, because I have been executing an order of the 
Senate; but I have managed to get here, I think, at every roll 
call. 

Mr. President, I do not believe there is a necessity for any great 
heat over this question. It seems to me that we who are in favor 
of the admission of the Hawaiian Islands, who expect it will be 
accomplished during this session of Congress, might as well make 
up our minds to wait until the debate is exhausted and to give to 
the other side fair debate. I am prepared to do that, although it 
is very inconvenient for me to do so. I am prepared to do it, be- 
cause I believe it is very important that we should act upon the 
subject at this session, perhaps not so very important that we 
should act upon it at this immediate hour or within the next two 
or three weeks. 

I said the other day that I was one of those who would not have 
objected to a postponement to a day fixed and certain upon which 
a vote could be taken at the next session, if that could have been 
had, although I can see that some complications might arise by a 
failure to act upon the subject at this session. 

I do not agree with the Senator from Alabama [Mr. Morgan] 
that the President of the United States has invaded the Hawaiian 
Islands. I understand that the Government of that country has 
not declared neutrality with reference to our affairs with Spain, 
and by the laws of nations, that being so, we have an unques- 
tioned right to her hospitality if she sees fit to extend it, and no 
nation in the w^orld can complain of that except Spain. Spain 
has a right to complain, and it might be made a subject of war on 
the part of Spain against the Hawaiian Islands. The Government 
of Hawaii took that chance when they said to us, "Land your 
sailors and your soldiers on our shores and coal your ships in our 
harbors." They did that, and a friendly government can extend 
that hospitality, and the same might have been extended to us by 
Great Britain if she had seen fit to do so, and it w^ould not have 
been a cause of complaint by any government in the world except 
the Government of Spain. 

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The President has not done anything out of the ordinary. There 
are plenty of precedents in the history of controversies of this 
character where such things have been done by friendly nations, 
even to the extent sometimes of allowing an armed force to pass 
across the border line and through a portion of the country to 
assail another state. 

I repeat that the only Government which has a right to be heard 
to complain as to this matter is Spain. France has no right to 
say anything, and Germany has no right to say anything. They 
maybe oif ended; they may think it is partiality that ought not 
to be exhibited; but thsyare notgoingto complain. But, suppose 
they do complain. Suppose France or Germany or Russia should 
say to the Hawaiian Government: "You must no longer extend 
to the United States the hospitality that you have heretofore ex- 
tended, or, if you do, you must reckon with us," and, Mr. Presi- 
dent, they would have to reckon then with us, that is, and not 
with the Government of Hawaii. Common decency on our part 
would require us to stand in front of and between these islands 
and any other power in the world, no matter how big it might 
be. The Government of Hawaii has a right under the law of na- 
tions to do what it has done. 

Mr. President, 1 wish we could get to a vote on this question; I 
wish we could settle it. I wish we could settle it, because I be- 
lieve it would be for the peace of this country. I do not believe 
anybody who has spoken against this joint resolution has intended 
by so doing to delay or to hinder in the slightest possible manner 
the conduct of this war; nor do I think because Senators do not 
believe in the acquisition of these islands and exercise a Senato- 
rial right to contend against it that we have any right to say that 
they are doing it for the purpose of impairing the power of the 
Government of the United States with relation to this war; and 
yet, Mr. President, it might do that. It has not done it up to the 
present time, and I am frank enough to say that I do not believe 
it will at any time. 

I do not believe that that question is going to be a factor in our 
relations in this controversy with Spain; and yet I should like to 
have it settled. I should like to have it settled before we come to 
settle some other great questions which we have got to settle. I 
am myself of the opinion that the American people are to be 
brought face to face with questions such as have never been pre- 
sented to them before. 

Mr. President, I am not one of those who lie awake at night or 
who worry about what will be the conduct of the American people. 
I have an abiding faith in the good sense of the great masses of 
my countrymen. I know that their intuitions are correct. _ I 
know when you submit to them a question involving the great in- 
terests of this nation, they will settle it properly, and they will 
settle it righteously, too. If it becomes necessary for the American 
people to change their policy and to do that which we have here- 
tofore declined to do — if, in the interests of the American people 
or in the interests of humanity, such a policy becomes necessary, 
they will be found solving that question in the right direction. 

I am one of those who do not believe that any evil wnll ever come 
lo the Republic by the exercise of that great spirit of humanity 
which induced us to go into this war. I do not believe when you 
rally the American people in the interests of freedom, you will 
do anything to debase them. I do not believe that will be pos- 
sible, though w^e may take in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Hawaiian 
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Islands, and the Philippine Islands. I do not believe you will 
endanger the solidity or the iDerpetuity of American institutions, 
because I believe that we are capable of settling these questions 
and settling them righteously and properly. 

As I said the other evening— and I am going to repeat it — 
every time we have acquired territory we have had this same con- 
troversy, honestly made, I have no doubt. I have before me now 
the debate which occurred in 1811, when the Territory of New 
Orleans was admitted as the State of Louisiana. Mr. President, 
there have not been any such prognostications of evil from our 
friends who are opposed to this joint resolution as then came from 
Massachusetts, from Virginia, and from various other States when 
it was proposed to admit the new State of Louisiana. All the 
evils that are predicted now were predicted then. 

It was said we would not know where to stop; it was said we 
should continue until we had extended our empire clear to the 
Pacific; and, Mr. President, thank God they were prophets when 
they stated that. But it was then stated as a threatened evil, as 
one of the things which were going to endanger the perpetuity of 
this Republic of States. 

Mr. President, we did extend our territory in spite of Josiah 
Quincy, who declared, in substance, that it was the right of all 
States to take themselves out of the Union, and the duty of some 
to do so if Lousiana should be admitted. It was denied that the 
United States Government possessed the power either from the 
Constitution or without it to take in a foot of territory that did 
not belong to the ancient colonies. They rung the changes on 
the ancient limits; that you could not go beyond the ancient 
limits; and that the provision for the admission of States was a 
provision for the admission of the territory that was ours, and 
none other. 

That is what worried Mr. Jefferson, who was a strict construc- 
tionist. He did not doubt our power to bring in the State after 
we had acquired the territory, but he doubted whether there was 
power under the Constitution to bring in any more territory at 
all. Yet he solved that doubt, Mr. President, in favor of bring- 
ing it in. We have erected monuments to Jefferson, and Fourth 
of July orators have been singing his praises ever since, and none 
too highly; but of all the great things he did for the country and 
for humanity, he never did anything comparable with that of the 
acquisition of Louisiana. It was the beginning of the expansion 
that has put twenty-eight Senators on this floor; it was that which 
secured to us the advent of the States on the gi-eat Pacific sea; it 
was that which changed us from a third-rate power to a great 
nation. 

Mr. President, when Texas came in there was the same argu- 
ment that has been heard on the other side within the last few 
days, of the lack of constitutional power. There was then the cry 
that it was without constitutional authority or constitutional right. 

As I said the other evening— and I want to say it again; it is 
simply a plain utterance which I think any lawyer ought to agree 
to— it' is the prerogative of nationality, of sovereignty, to have the 
right to add to its territory. There is not a nation in the world 
that does not assert it. It could have been taken from us only by 
positive constitutional prohibition; and if that had been sug- 
gested, do you believe the great men of that day would have agreed 
that we were to be bound by the province of Spain or France on the 
west and by the province of Great Britain on the north, and that 
under no circumstances were we to expand our territory? 
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Oh, no, Mr. President, they would not have put that into the 
Constitution, and they did not. put it in. He who hunts the Con- 
stitution over will find no authority for the admission of new ter- 
ritory, for the admission of a new State, outside of that which 
existed at the time. You get that power in the power of sov- 
ereignty; you get that power as you get many other powers which 
a great nation must exert; you get it because this is a nation and 
because such a power is essential to its preservation and to its 
prosperity. Every great power that belongs to every other nation 
belongs to us. 

Do you believe that our fathers, who expected some day we 
would be great, but perhaps not in a hundred years so great as 
now, wanted to hedge us in? Josiah Quincy objected to the 
exercise of that power because it created a disparity between the 
States. He said the power would be transferred from one section 
to the other. Others objected for the same reason. 

Mr. President, I promised at one time that I would not debate 
the Hawaiian question, and I shall not. I debated that question 
in 1894 quite to my satisfaction. These are not new questions to 
me. I have considered for forty years the question of what is the 
power of the Government of the United States with reference to 
these islands and to acquire what may be called foreign lands. 

I have been a student of these questions. I came into active 
life — as a voter, I mean — when these great questions were before 
the American people and when there were grsyat men in public 
life — when there were men like Marcy, of New York, of whom I 
have often spoken here, because he was a citizen of the State of 
which I was then a citizen, and a member of the political party 
with which I commenced my political life. He was then con- 
tending for the admission of these islands. You have not had a 
greater constitutional lawyer in the Democratic party since he 
died. You have not had a purer man. You have not had a man 
who was more democratic in his sentiments than Mr. Marcy. 

I was following his flag. I was a Democrat of the Marcy stripe, 
and I have been following that flag ever since. I have been be- 
lieving that it was a mission which we had to take in these islands, 
because they are needful to us and because of the great develop- 
ment that 1 believe is to come to us when we have 200,000,000 peo- 
ple on this continent; more than that, when we shall have a popu- 
lation equal to that of China, maintained here, as I believe it can 
be, in comfort, in happiness, in liberty, and when our trade to the 
Pacific sea and across it will be the great trade of the world and 
a great boon to this great population when it shall be overflowing 
and filling the land with just such people as we have to-day, only, 
I trust, a little better. 

Mr. President, we want those islands. We want them because 
they are th e stopping way across the sea. Senators may talk about 
Alaska. They may tell us that you have a better coaling station. 
It is not true. Why do not your ships go there? They go the 
other way because the God who made the winds and the waves 
decreed that the ships shall go in the line of water as it rushes and 
the wind as it blows. That is why they go to Honolulu. Seven 
out of eight of the great lines that go across the water go there. 
Every sailing ship that goes out of San Francisco goes there, and 
it goes there because the wind and the tide decree that it shall. 

Mr. President, those islands are necessary to our safety, they are 
necessary to our commerce, and we can give to those people the 
blessings of a free government and not injure ourselves. On the 
3517 



other hand, there lies on onr border the richest island of its size, 
save one, in the world, an island cursed for four hundred j^ears by 
a government such as few countries have ever had. There ought 
to be a population there of 20,000,000. Java, no bigger and but 
little richer, has 20,000,000 under the kindly administration of 
Holland. On that island, with a government such as we shall 
give them or a government such as they shall establish and we 
shall assist them in maintaining, there will be in a few years the 
most industrious population of the world, where labor will be the 
best rewarded because of the richness of the soil. It can be made 
a source of great benefit to us and we can be the agency of great 
good to them. 

Will we let any other power have it? All say not. We have 
gone to war not to acquire it, but to give those people a govern- 
ment such as they are entitled to and to avoid the annoyance and 
the damage and the dangers to us that a contest of that kind kept 
up for years brings on. I do not know what the government will 
be. I repeat, as I said before, I will leave it to the American peo- 
ple to do justice and right when the time comes, and I do not care 
what party is in power, whether it be the one which is now in 
power or another one. The American people will see to it that 
justice is done the people there and that justice is done tons here. 

Mr. President, we will be met in December with another ques- 
tion farther from our doors, more difficult infinitely than these 
others. The question we are debating is of no consequence perhaps 
compared with what you will meet then. Will you take from Spain 
the 2,000 islands that are now Spain's and return them to Spain? 
I have been studying the history of those islands. There is not 
much to be learned about them. I found some difficulty in get- 
ting at the facts, but I will venture to say that within two hun- 
dred years the sun has not shone in any other portion of the world 
on such a government as was found in those islands— on such 
wickedness, such oppression, such imbecility and fraud as has 
been exhibited by the Spanish Government of those islands for 
two hundred years. Having gone to war to free Cuba with 1,500,- 
000 people, are we going to return to the tender mercies of Spain 
8,000,000 men as good in every respect as the people who inhabit 
the Island of Cuba, and in my judgment a great many of whom 
are infinitely better? 

Mr. President, that is one phase of the question. I will dismiss 
that by saying that the party which will propose to return those 
islands will go out of power in the American nation and will 
remain out for a generation. The American people will never 
submit to it and no Administration will propose it. No Senator 
will stand here and advocate it, either, when the time comes. 
What shall we do with them? Shall we trade them off? Shall 
we become a peddler, and shall we say to some great power, 
"Doubting our ability to maintain a good government for these 
people, doubting their ability to maintain a government for them- 
selves, will you take the islands off our hands and try your hand 
at it and see how you will get along, and give us something in 
return?'' That would be a spectacle for the gods. It never will 
happen. No man will disgrace us by proposing it. 

If some newspaper writer has suggested it, no statesman will; 
and if he did, the American people would declare we have not 
sacrificed our men in Manila for the purpose of returning the 
islands to Spain or trading them off to anybody else. Where the 
American soldier dies and is buried and the American flag is put 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

019 944 349 5 



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Tip, I say there it will stay, and we will grapple with the great 
problem whether we are capable of managing colonies or not and 
try it; and if we fail, it will be the first time that the Anglo-Saxon 
race has failed when these great problems have been presented. 
It will be the first time that the American people have failed when 
great questions were presented to them to solve them properly 
and righteously and in the interest of their own people and the 
world. 

Mr. President, let us meet it. Let us say to the world, let us 
say to everybody, ' ' We are going to do the right thing w^hen the 
right time comes." If these people are fit for local government, 
and can stand alone according to the principles that we have pro- 
claimed, it will be our duty to see that they do. If they can not, 
it will be our duty to see that they have such a system and such 
education as will put them in line where ultimately they can en- 
joy the blessings of a free flag. 

Mr. President, you hear mutterings of Germany, of Japan, of 
Russia, and of France. They tell us that Germany has a squad- 
ron there, and they do not know what it means. I saw the other 
day that Prince Henry said to Dewey something that indicated 
that he might want to have a hand in the protection of German 
interests in Manila, and Admiral Dewey, who understood the laws 
of war, knew we were there in control, and that nobody else had 
a right except with our consent to land marines, said: " Prince, I 
hope you will not get your ships between my ^ms and the enemy;'* 
and he will not. 

Let us give the world to understand that we did not seek this 
war: that we did i ot go into it for conquest; that we went ir to it 
tor the purpose of enlarging the area of human freedom, and that 
we can enlarge it at home and abroad; that if our duty required 
us to do it in Cuba, it requires us to do it in the Philippine Islands, 
and that we will settle this question for ourselves. We will say 
to Spain when she gets out, "Everything you or your people have 
got here shall be kindly cared for." We will say to Germany, 
*' Your people shall have our protection, but you keep your hands 
off. We will not tolerate your interference, because we are capa- 
ble of taking care of your people as well as you are yourselves." 

I would say to the world, when this war is over, "We will set- 
tle with Spain. We want no interference. We want no concert 
of powers; " and if I was President, I would not allow any con- 
cert of powers to address me on the subject of peace. I would say 
to them, "The American nation is big enough to conduct this war 
to a successful issue. She is generous enough and good enough 
when it is through to make an honorable and proper peace with 
the enemy that she has subdued." Our honor and reputation 
among the nations of the world are at stake. 

With the greatest population, save one, of any country that 
may be called harmonious or homogeneous— in fact, I think I may 
say the only homogeneous population of 75,000,000— with a wealth 
that no other nation possesses, with a history for fairness and 
good treatment of friend and foe equal to that of any other nation 
in the world, we can say to the world, " Let us solve this problem 
unaided and unassisted, and we will do it in accordance with 
right and in accordance with justice, keeping in mind at all times 
not only the interest of the American people, but every one of the 
people whom we invite or bring under the influence of our flag. " 

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